IndiGo looking at 30% capacity growth; will take a cautious approach for international expansion plan: CEO Ronojoy Dutta

India’s largest airline IndiGo is looking at a 30 percent capacity growth and half of it will cater to the international market, said the carrier’s top official. Besides this, IndiGo is exploring wide-bodied aircraft for international expansion while admitting that despite being dangerous they are inevitable, said a report in the CNBC TV18 quoting Ronojoy Dutta, the CEO of the no-frills carrier.

#CNBCTV18Exclusive | @IndiGo6E CEO, Ronojoy Dutta says there is a difference, not many differences, between the promoters; the difference is not an airline issue, it's an administrative issue. Issue lies in the agreement language that the founders have agreed to pic.twitter.com/MxOfZksENx

— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) June 25, 2019

Saying that the country’s domestic aviation market would continue to grow at around 14 percent, Dutta believes that IndiGo will not commit the mistakes that led to the decline of Jet Airways and said the budget carrier would take a cautious approach for its overseas expansion plan, the report said. In May this year, the founders of the budget carrier — Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal — had locked horns over strategies and ambitions for IndiGo, the largest airline in the country by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 49.9 percent domestic market share. [caption id=“attachment_5506871” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Promoters hold about 75 percent stake in InterGlobe Aviation as per March quarter shareholding pattern on the BSE. The reports of the spat between IndiGo’s major promoters threw the employees of the airline into disarray besides pulling down the shares. Later, Dutta had clarified that one of the co-founders of IndiGo had no plan to take control of the carrier. In March last year, IndiGo had to cancel 47 flights after the country’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), grounded eight of its A320neo planes with faulty Pratt & Whitney engines. The grounding of Naresh Goyal-led Jet Airways created a huge vacuum in India’s aviation sector. The 25-year-old private carried had to stop its operations temporarily on 17 April this year following an acute liquidity crunch The airline owes over Rs 8,500 crore to a consortium of 26 banks led by State Bank of India (SBI), and over Rs 13,000 crore to the tens of hundreds of vendors and around 23,000-odd employees. Last week, the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) initiated insolvency proceedings against the debt-ridden Jet Airways.